Your Trusted Source For Political Kitsch & Tchotskies

Still some holes in Ebay’s shielding our eyes from the Cracker Cross. Another demonstration of fifties casual Confederating is shown by poster for “Love Me Tender,” the Elvis vehicle which brought us the maudlin classic of the same name.

But DC’s would-be hipsters have made a complete hash of their theme borrowing. Nice use of Lewis Hine breaker boy photo, and he did campaign for the eight hour day and against child labor, but this was decades after Haymarket Riot, which wasn’t on Labor Day.

Haymarket was the birthplace of the original Labor Day, May Day. That holiday commemrates the anarchists and others executed after Chicago police broke up a peacefull labor protest and a bomb was thrown in the Chicago square.

The authorities rounded up the leaders of the eight-hour day movement who’d organized the rally, and charged them with having somehow inspired the unknown bomb thrower.

They were hung in 1887, and the world labor movement began to mark May 1 as Labor Day.

September’s Labor Day is the thoughtful alternative, growing in importance when workers were actually allowed to organize under the New Deal. May Day was demonized as a Soviet holiday, and in the 50s “Law Day” was invented to compare and contrast with their crude tank displays. Law Day in turn was appropriated by cop groups who come to Washington by the thousands to stand around the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial and gape at its hidious lion cub statues.

Illegal Immigrant Strikes!

Leon Trotsky died in Mexico seventy years ago this week.

In this delicate time, where may the Trot-curious turn for information and solace?

Burly Christopher Hitchens, America’s pet former Trotskyist, has long waxed nostalgic for his time in the struggle, although technically the grouplet to which he once adhered, Britain’s International Socialists [now Socialist Workers Party] had sprung free from orthodox Trotskyism.

A more “upbeat” tone is set by Uruguay’s own Trotsky Vengaran[“Trotsky Avenged”, or “Avenge Trotsky”]

Trotsky is but an afterthought in the marketing juggernaut which is Frida Kahlo, but one to which The Old Man adds a bit of saucy fun.

Kahlo’s partner Diego Rivera sponsored Trotsky’s asylum in Mexico, protecting, housing and feeding him. Trotsky returned the favor by having an affair with Kahlo, by some accounts. In the Salma Hayek biopic an unlikely Geoffrey Rush does the honors.

Remember when every store from The Gap on up was crammed with vaguely Frida inspired fashion, quickly flushed from the market by the clothing buying public’s indifference?

“Frida” as brand appears to live on principally in naming the endless supply of somewhat Mexican bars and restaurants, many with murals slapped up!

Audiences have not clamored for “Zina,” which recreates the world of a Trotsky daughter, the suicidal mother of his grandson who operates the Trotsky Museum in Mexico. Her psychological fragility can’t have been helped by living in Berlin as Hitler advanced to power. She once visited Trotsky’s Turkish exile, accompanied by two ostensible Trotskyists who were in fact Soviet agents. Both her ex-husbands were killed by Stalin. The film incorporates actual home movies Trotsky shot in Mexico, but it’s only available in PAL format, forcing you to go to the Euro side.

Assassin Ramon Mercader’s path to Trotsky [and afterlife in Cuba and the USSR] is traced in this Spanish documentary:

Before Mexico Trotsky’s first stop in exile was Turkey, where he spent four years. This film recreates those magical days, a highlight of which was fishing with dynamite sticks, according to Trotsky secretary Jean Van Heijenoort [or perhaps it was a story from another secretary, Albert Glotzer.] In any case, fish were gotten by fair means or foul.

How the deed was done, film & photo division:

…the best account of Stalin’s disappearing Trotsky and others from the images of the revolution.

Trotsky has not been entirely absent from Mexico since his assassination. The fifties saw production of a Mexican film with the Devil messing with Santa:

…with the Devil played for some reason by an actor named Jose Luis Aguirre ‘Trotsky.’

The film was so bad, or the rights to it so cheap, that it was worthy of a salute -Mystery Science Theater 3000: Santa Claus:

The Washington Postreports on the tragic encounter between boring old “Colonial Williamsburg” and red hot tea baggers, searching for validation in the make believe village.

Park operators seem somewhat leary of the crazed tricorn-hatists now flocking to the sleepy Virginia recreation of a cleaned up colonial village.

But times are tough and all are welcome.

This the price the nation must bear for the indulgence of reenactors. Prancing about in itchy uniforms at battlefields where real issues were decided has led to greater tolerance of costumed cranks in general. And we are left with queeny reactions when someone dares to suggest that the slavery bits in the Constitution were not inscribed on gold tablets.

Why not begin with the man himself, your very own Richard M. Nixon Talking Action Figure!

Others may wish to commune with the man himself, Being Richard Nixon, or the sweaty facsimile thereof. Kids of all ages still snap up the Nixon masks for Halloween, and a subset finds them useful in robbing banks.

You can return to Nixon’s Red Hunting roots with this portrait of a simpler time, then Congressman Nixon pretending to examine the famous in their day Pumpkin Papers:

One of the five film rolls was blank, giving us 20% odds that the staged event was even faker than it appears.

Nixon pioneered the Republican habit of hauling minorities around for street cred.

You’ll always treasure the special friendship of Sammy Davis Jr. and Nixon with this commemorative key chain.

For the true Nixonian connoisseur only ” Millhouse – A White Comedy” will do. Warm up the VCR and return to a magical era, when Nixon could salvage his place on the 52′ Republican ticket with a mawkish speech, the climax of which was the candidates firm vow not to surrender his daughters’ puppy.

Richard Nixon: he fights for you!

Shown shouting at lefty Latin American students, Nixon displays his mastery at presenting himself as America’s champion against the swarthy Reds.

They may all be weird, but Nixon hid it least. David Greenberg writes on the history of Nixon character archaeology, the decades of man hours dedicated to trying to fathom his mysteries.

*Phil Ochs’ leftiod-folkie classic “Here’s To The State of Richard Nixon” isn’t sold in stores, but you can acquire an MP3 version, and if you really want to attract stares a ring-tone is available, for unfathomable reasons.